Space Taxi
Platform: Commodore 64
Gametype: Undefined
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Description 

You work as a taxi driver in a town from the 23rd century and earn your money by driving passengers through this crazy town. When you do your job fast and good, you will be rewarded -after successfully playing all 24 levels, which stand for the 24 hours of a day- a bonus level named "Mystery Screen", and a final screen. In the game Space Taxi you fly a taxi and bring passengers either from platform to platform or into the next level. Steering the taxi must be done carefully, as landing too hard, touching edges of obstacles and characters or a collision with flying items as balls, comets, etc. will mean a crash. Also you need to land on even platforms. To collect passengers you should not drive into them but instead land next to them. If passengers are collected quickly and are flown to the pad of their desire you receive money in $. Not only with money you play against time, the gas in your tank is also limited. Therefore, in some levels there are platforms where you can refuel the taxi. The first levels might be easy to play, but the difficulty rises, i.e. more customers and platforms, more narrow flying paths, partially puzzles, disturbing elements, etc. The name of the level gives roughly away what can be expected.

Design 

The levels are designed simply but multicoloured and with funny ideas. Next to the animated Space Taxi and the customers, there are animated elements in some levels (mainly made of manipulated characters). The customers talk, there are sound noises from the taxi and a short melody when entering the new level. 

 Hints 

The game can be played with up to 4 players in 5 variations: 
1. Morning Shift - Beginners, Starting level: Short -n- Sweet (Level 1 - 8 ) 
2. Day Shift - Intermediate, Starting level: Crossfire (Level 9 - 16 ) 
3. Night Shift - Expert, Starting level: Interference (Level 17 - 24) 
4. Play all 24 levels completely 
5. Play all 24 levels randomly 

In the lower part of each level important hints can be found: 
 At the leftmost you can see the number of taxis left (lifes) and below the earned money (points) 
 Next to that is displayed whether the landing was succesful (green or yellow flashing lamp) or not (red flashing lamp) 
 Next to that in the upper middle is the fuel indicator (E = empty, F = full), directly below are the wishes of the passengers displayed 
 At the right edge is the display of how many levels have been played and below that you can see the backwards running money indication for the current customer transport. 

Points: 
Next to the money as a time bonus there is additional money for each delivered customer, lump-sum 5 or 10 $ (when the customer is from the previous level) 
Customers that had been knocked over cost 10$ 
Refuelling of the taxi on platform F also costs money 

Controls in the title screen: 

 = show highscore list 
 = info screen (with F8  one can clear the highscore list) 
 = start 

Controls in the game: 

 = give a thrust in the corresponding direction 
 = extend landing skid 

RunStop  = abort game 
ShiftLock  = pause 

 Cheats 

Secret menu 
 If you make it to complete all 24 levels in one go, you will reach the secret 25th level. In this "secret screen" you are greeted with "Welcome to... MUSEWORLD" and on three platforms three obstacles appear, that refer to other games by Muse Software. So there is an ambulance for Rescue Squad (also by John F. Kutcher, 1983), a soldier with swastika for Castle Wolfenstein (Silias S. Warner, 1983) and a shooting robot for RobotWar (Silias S. Warner, 1981 released on Apple II). 

 At the lower screen there is the real secret: 
 "Eat the P I E until a "F I R E" glows, then go U P until it stops, touch a S T A R and you'll see the S E C R E T M E N U !!!". 

 The spaced written text parts are emphasised through a different colour in the game and give the key to open the "secret menu": for this you need to go back to the instruction screen (press joystick downwards in the starting screen) and press the keys, to which the emphasized text parts of the "secret menu" refer: first the key π  (which was in the C64, with emulators it is the combination shift+delete) as many times as it needs, until the word "fire" changes its colour in the lowest line (..."until a "fire" glows"...).Then the key ↑  (which is not the cursor key, with emulators use delete), until the colour is black again and lastly the key  *  . Now the "secret menu" with the following options appears: create own demo, switch off sprite collision, manual level selection with random order (Random shift) and information about the programmer.


http://www.c64-wiki.com/index.php/Space_Taxi
